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New student laptops and updated workflow: coming soon!

I’m excited to report that the student iBook laptops will soon be replaced with shiny new MacBooks. Yay! And there was much rejoicing. The Dells are still fairly new, so those will remain, but the Dells will be re-imaged. This will all happen sometime in the coming week — stay tuned.

The most important thing to note is that once the new student MacBooks and re-imaged Dells are in place, our borrowers will need to connect with an ethernet cable and log on with their Midd username/password in order to use the laptop. We already provide an ethernet cable at the far end of the Circ Desk for faculty and staff to use, so the student laptops will just be part of that routine now. There is also space for a second ethernet cable at the end of the Circ Desk, and we may want to have that available during busy times of the year.

Having users log in is critical for a couple reasons: printing (since Print Management is in place, and everyone has to log in to send print jobs); connecting to file servers; and security.

So at check out, we will send borrowers to the end of the counter to plug in an ethernet cable and log in, then go on their merry way. At check in we just need to make sure the laptop is shut down (and not just “asleep”). We don’t have to do anything else beyond that, which is wonderful.

I’m glad that we can test out the workflow during the summer, since it’s a slower time for student laptop borrowing. Again, I’ll be sure to alert everyone when these changes are in place — the Helpdesk thinks it could happen in about a week. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns.